You see, water vapour is transparent to visible light and thus lets inthe sunlight but it is opaque to infrared light heat so it traps theheat just like CO2 or a greenhouse. Now if the conditions are right,water vapour forms tiny ice crystals and/or water droplets in the air.There needs to be low temperature and there needs to be tiny particleslike dust in the air and when water vapour does this trick, it makesclouds that are white and are opaque to all light. This means, that whilethe clouds do not let heat escape they, also prevent the sunlight fromfully reaching the earth.
So clouds are a net benefit. So it would appear, that to fight climatechange, you might wish to increase cloud cover. And you would be correctin thinking that. In fact there are designs for giant machines to makeclouds and yet it would appear to be an act of hubris to try to useartificial means to address the problem of climate change. If you canincrease the cloud forming material in the air, you might be abel toaddress the issue using natural means, but until recently we did notunderstand where a lot of the material that seeds clouds came from.
Recent research though has been demonstrating a link between tinyairborne bacteria and cloud formation.So called bio-precipitation has received little attention in the pastand is now becoming better and better understood. It turns out thatplants have bacteria on their leaves that, when blown into the air bythe wind, are very good at seeding clouds so that they can hitch a rideon the rainfall back down to the earth.
If you imagine the wind blowing across a plain of grass, it will pickup some bacteria. But if you imagine the wind blowing through a forest,then you can imagine that from the tall trees in the canopy, there willbe far more bacteria picked up and blown high into the air. Here thenis a link between forests and cloud cover. What makes this sosignificant, is that this also means that there is another link thatyou can immediately infer, the link of cutting down forests andincreasing climate change.
It is well known that one major cause of desertification, where theland dries out and becomes desert, is deforestation. Now consider thatcutting our forests also reduces the chances, that clouds can form. Thepicture becomes grim indeed. Yet there is also cause for hope, perhapseven celebration, because if cutting down trees makes climate mattersabruptly worse then the converse is likely to be true.
Planting trees in forests can very likely cause more biomass to beblown into the air and thereby an increase in cloud cover and thus areturn to a lower temperature on the planet. As well planting treesinto bio-diverse sustainable forests can be done relatively quicklyand possibly even profitably. This is very good news because it givesus a direct natural method of combatting climate change that we didnot understand before.
If we could increase global cloud cover by just 2, we would be able tohalt climate change long enough for us to develop the energymiracles we need to reduce our carbon foot print. To do this, we needto change mind sets and get really clever at designing new foreststhat can support people, bio-diversity and generate income.
All over the world, there is a feeling that cleared land is morevaluable than forested land. Farmers and developers see the effortthey have to put in to fell the trees and remove the forest. Theythen feel like the cleared land is worth more because it is manageableand has had the effort of clearing put into it.
Forests are often seen as impediments to progress with a residualvalue being the value of the timber that can be harvested duringclearing. A big problem in the world to day is that once the land iscleared of its forest it tends to degrade in quality. Precious soilserode, vital nutrients are lost and irrigation often is needed whichbrings new problems like salination, where the land retains too muchsalt. The cleared land often becomes worthless, so new land is thencleared of forest.
While we must stop deforestation it is also clear that we must do moreand better than that. Using advanced ethical design techniques it ispossible, to rehabilitate degraded land and replant the forest. If itis done in an intelligent way, it is possible to produce a range ofcash crops in a bio-diverse massive forest garden that easily makes therehabilitated land more productive and more valuable than even thefreshly cleared land. It is possible to feed people and animals bothdomesticated and wild simultaneously in such a food forest.
The key is education and knowledge. Once you understand permaculturedesign principles it is quite cheap and much easier to plant a forestthat can support your family. Also land ownership rights can play avital role. Once people understand how to make a sustainable livingfrom an area of forest, it is powerful to allow them ownership of theland albeit for specific purpose.
We have an opportunity to use reforestation to restore the balance ofthe world and to provide for billions of people and while we have manyfixed mindsets about forests, we also have the greatest chance ever forglobal education with the penetration of mobile internet across theplanet to disseminate techniques like permaculture design to even thepoorest of the poor in the world.
So what can you do? There are thousands of organisations dedicated toprotecting forests and to reforesting. Join one such as weforest.comThere are many permaculture design courses in the world. Go and learnfor your self! Plant trees in your own habitat and donate toorganisations like the green belt movement so they can also planttrees in their habitat.
Above all share what you have just read with others so that we allmight create a movement that boycotts products from clear felled andunsustainable farming practices and so that we may all finally put areal value on forested lands that allows us to treasure what is surelythe greets asset we can pass on to our children and futuregenerations.
